Wednesday, February 16, 2005

tsunami shortened days.

NASA scientists B. F. Chao and Richard Gross calculated it shifted Earth's mean north pole about 1 inch and made the planet slightly less oblate, or flattened at the poles.

"Physically, this is analogous to a spinning skater drawing arms closer to the body, resulting in a faster spin," they wrote in an article in Eos, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

according to dictionary..oblate means = Having an equatorial diameter greater than the distance between poles; compressed along or flattened at the poles. We are not talking about magnetic pole but geographic pole.

equatorial means = The imaginary great circle around the earth's surface, equidistant from the poles and perpendicular to the earth's axis of rotation. It divides the earth into the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.

in other words, it means the earth now is a bit more rounded than usual (oblate)